NABOKV-L post 0027444, Tue, 1 Aug 2017 15:24:38 +0300

In his Commentary to Shade’s poem Kinbote (one of the three main characters in VN’s novel Pale Fire, 1962) mentions the black cat that appeared on the threshold of the music room:

The Goldsworth château had many outside doors, and no matter how thoroughly I inspected them and the window shutters downstairs at bedtime, I never failed to discover next morning something unlocked, unlatched, a little loose, a little ajar, something sly and suspicious-looking. One night the black cat, which a few minutes before I had seen rippling down into the basement where I had arranged toilet facilities for it in an attractive setting, suddenly reappeared on the threshold of the music room, in the middle of my insomnia and a Wagner record, arching its back and sporting a neck bow of white silk which it could certainly never have put on all by itself. (note to Line 62)

Kinbote believes that this is his landlord’s cat that came with the house. Actually, it is a different animal altogether (some neighbor’s cat). In E. A. Poe’s story The Black Cat (1945) the name of the first black cat is Pluto. In classical mythology Pluto is the ruler of the underworld. In his poem Prozerpina (“Proserpine,” 1824) Pushkin mentions koni blednogo Plutona (pale Pluto’s horses):

Delvig compares Pushkin’s poem to a bird of paradise’s singing that one can listen for a thousand years without noticing the passage of time.

In his great introductory poem to the second edition (1828) of Ruslan and Lyudmila Pushkin mentions kot uchyonyi (the learned cat) that walks to and fro along a golden chain around a green oak. According to Kinbote, kot or is Zemblan for “what is the time:”

What is the time, kot or? He pressed his repeater and, undismayed, it hissed and tinkled out ten twenty-one. (note to Line 149)

Kot or hints at kotoryi chas (“what is the time” in Russian). In Mandelshtam’s poem Net, ne luna, a svetlyi tsiferblat… (“No, not the moon, but a clock’s dial lit brightly…” 1912) mad Batyushkov to the question kotoryi chas replies vechnost’ (Eternity):

According to Kinbote, Sybil Shade’s maiden name comes from hirondelle (Fr., swallow):

John Shade's wife, née Irondell (which comes not from a little valley yielding iron ore but from the French for "swallow"). She was a few months his senior. I understand she came of Canadian stock, as did Shade's maternal grandmother (a first cousin of Sybil's grandfather, if I am not greatly mistaken). (note to Line 247)

Actually, Sybil Shade’s “real” name seems to be Sofia Botkin (born Lastochkin). Btw., Sofia was the name of Delvig’s wife (born Saltykov).

Remain as foam, O, Aphrodite,
And let no word from music part,
Let heart become ashamed of heart,
With origins of life fused tightly!

(transl. Andrey Kneller)

Silentium! (1830) is a famous poem by Tyutchev. In the last stanza of his poem Vesennyaya groza (“The Spring Thunderstorm,” 1828) Tyutchev mentions frivolous Hebe spilling on Earth her thunder-boiling cup. Hebe’s Cup is the title of Shade’s third book of verse:

Dim Gulf was my first book (free verse); Night Rote
Came next; then Hebe's Cup, my final float
in that damp carnival, for now I term
Everything "Poems," and no longer squirm.
(But this transparent thingum does require
Some moondrop title. Help me, Will! Pale Fire.) (ll. 957-952)

In his poem To One in Paradise (1843) E. A. Poe compares the Past to a dim gulf:

Ah, dream too bright to last!

Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise

But to be overcast!

A voice from out the Future cries,

“On! on!”—but o’er the Past

(Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies

Mute, motionless, aghast!

After the suicide of his daughter Nadezhda (Hazel Shade’s “real” name that means in Russian “Hope”) Professor Vsevolod Botkin (an American scholar of Russian descent) went mad and became Shade, Kinbote and Gradus (Shade’s murderer). There is a hope that, when Kinbote completes his work on Shade’s poem and commits suicide (on October 19, 1959, the Lyceum anniversary), Botkin will be “full” again.

Delvig died on January 14, 1831 (on the anniversary of fictional Lenski’s death). In a letter of January 31, 1831, to Pletnyov Pushkin says that the three of us (Pushkin, Baratynski and Pletnyov) should write Delvig’s life bogatuyu nadezhdami (rich in hopes):